Campaigning for health, justice, sustainability, peace, and democracy

Monsanto’s Roundup: The Whole Toxic Enchilada

Last week, while we waited for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to announce whether or not the agency will give Monsanto’s Roundup a free pass by green lighting the use of glyphosate for another 15 years, the EPA’s counterpart in the EU made its own big announcement.

Glyphosate is “unlikely to cause cancer” said the authors of the new report by the European Union Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

That headline, music to Monsanto’s ears, seemed to fly in the face of the findings published earlier this year by the World Health Organization (WHO). After extensive review of the evidence, all 17 of WHO’s leading cancer experts said glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen?”

Sustainable Pulse (SP), publisher of global news on GMOs and other food-related issues, quickly reported the glaring omission made by the majority of news sources reporting on EFSA’s findings.

According to SP, what EFSA really concluded is this: Glyphosate by itself doesn’t cause cancer. But products like Monsanto’s Roundup, which contain glyphosate and other additives and chemicals that are essential to making the herbicide work? That’s another, or in this case, the rest of the story.

The seven hundred years-old expression, “curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost,” rarely has been more appropriate than to describe what is happening to the world’s largest purveyor of gene-manipulated or GMO seeds and paired chemical toxins. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of genocidal eugenicists. Monsanto Corporation of St Louis is apparently in a deep decline.

Ever since 1992 when that nasty US President George H. W. Bush conspired–yes, Virginia, conspiracies exist– with the leadership of Monsanto to unleash GMOs on an unwitting American population, Monsanto seemed unstoppable.

With the help of Bush, who made a decree that no US Government agency be allowed to independently test GMO seeds or their chemicals for health and safety–the fraudulent and totally unscientific Doctrine of Substantial Equivalence–Monsanto could make its own fraudulent doctored tests and give them to US or EU agencies as valid. As a result, GMO seeds took over American agriculture, based on a pack of lies to farmers that they would raise yields and decrease chemical use. Monsanto spread its GMO far around the world, through bribery as in Indonesia, and through the unusual machinations of the Government of the United States. Monsanto paid scientists to lie about its products safety.

It used the corrupt Brussels European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to back its position, even when alarming studies such as the famous September 2012 Food and Chemical Toxicology peer-reviewed study by Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini created shock waves around the world. The Seralini study, the first ever long term, two year study of GMO diet with a group of 200 rats found shocking effects. Among them that,”female rats fed Monsanto GMO maize died 2–3 times more than controls, and more rapidly… Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than, and before, controls; the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments.”

Monsanto then set about to kill the messenger by pressuring the Food & Chemical Toxicology journal to hire a former Monsanto employee, Richard E. Goodman, who promptly declared Seralini’s study “unscientific” and deleted it, an act almost without precedent in science journals. A year later both Goodman and the journal’s editor-in-chief were forced to step down and Seralini’s article was republished in another scientific journal. But the scientific character assassination against Seralini had a chilling effect as Monsanto wanted.

Feds Hide Secret List Of 11 Staggering Obamacare Insurers

A man looks over the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York in this Oct. 2, 2013 photo illustration. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

Richard Pollock

Federal officials have a secret list of 11 Obamacare health insurance co-ops they fear are on the verge of failure, but they refuse to disclose them to the public or to Congress, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has learned.

Just in the last three weeks, five of the original 24 Obamacare co-ops announced plans to close, bringing the total of failures to eight barely two years after their launch with $2 billion in start-up capital from the taxpayers under the Affordable Care Act.

All 24 received 15-year loans in varying amounts to offer health insurance to poor and low income customers and provide publicly funded competition to private, for-profit insurers. The eight co-ops to announce closings served populations in ten states: Iowa, Nebraska, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Nevada, Tennessee, Vermont, New York and Colorado.

Nearly half a million failing co-op customers will have to find new coverage in 2016. More than $900 million of the original $2 billion in loans has been lost.

The 11 unidentified co-ops appear to be still operating but are now on “enhanced oversight” by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which manages the Obamacare program. The 11 received letters from CMS demanding that they take urgent actions to avoid closing.

Aaron Albright, chief CMS spokesman, said 11 co-ops “are either on a corrective action plan or enhanced oversight. We have not released the letters or names.” He gave no grounds for withholding the information from either the public or Congress.

CMS officials have stonewalled multiple congressional inquiries into the co-op financial problems. The latest congressional inquiry came in a September 30 letter to CMS acting administrator Andy Slavitt demanding transparency over the troubled program.

“We have long been concerned about the financial solvency of CO-OPs,” three House Ways and Means committee members wrote to Slavitt. “Which plans have received these warnings or have been placed on corrective plans,” the congressmen asked. To date, they have received no reply.

Insurance commissioners in Vermont were the first to refuse to license the federally approved co-op there in 2013 because they feared those financial plans were unrealistic. But then the dominoes began to fall this year, resulting in at least eight co-op failures. And if CMS officials are to be believed, more failures may be on the way.

Sen. Charles Grassley , a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee who has been an outspoken critic of the troubled co-op program, said transparency should be a top priority for the faltering program.

“Since the public’s business generally ought to be public, CMS should have a good reason for not disclosing which co-ops are troubled,” he said.

Thousands rally against Erdogan as Turkey mourns deadliest attack

By Fulya Ozerkan, Camille AntunesOctober 11, 2015 7:16 PM

Associated Press Videos

Raw: Thousands Mourn Victims of Ankara Blast

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Ankara (AFP) – Thousands of mourners filled the streets of Ankara Sunday and vented their anger at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after 97 people were killed in the country’s worst-ever terror attack, while the government raced to identify the two male suicide bombers it blamed for the bloodshed.

Flags flew at half-mast across Turkey on the first of three days of national mourning declared by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, as questions grew over who could have ordered Saturday’s bombings on a peace rally in Ankara.

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), one of the groups that had organised the rally, said it believes the death toll now stands at 128.

The attacks have raised tensions in Turkey just three weeks before snap elections are due on November 1 and as the military wages an offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists and Kurdish militants.

With the country on edge, Erdogan issued a statement condemning the “heinous” bombings and cancelled a planned visit to Turkmenistan but he has yet to speak in public since the attack that shocked the nation.

On Sunday, thousands of demonstrators thronged central Ankara’s Sihhiye Square, close to the blast site by the city’s main train station, to pay tribute to the victims.

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ATTENTION EDITORS – VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH An injured man hugs an injured woma …

Many of those gathered accused the government of failing to provide security at the ill-fated rally and several anti-government demonstrators shouted “Erdogan murderer” and “government resign!”

“I am a mother, I’m worried about my grandchildren, I am marching for our children, for our future. Each time there are people dead, I also die a little,” said Zahide, who like many others carried a pink carnation flower to commemorate the victims.

The premier’s office said 97 people were killed when the bombs exploded just after 10:00 am (0700 GMT) as leftist and pro-Kurdish activists assembled for the rally.

It added that 507 people were wounded, with 160 still in hospital and 65 in intensive care in 19 hospitals.

An AFP correspondent said the scene of the blast was littered with ball bearings, indicating the explosions were intended to cause maximum damage.

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A family mourns in an area allocated for families of victims of Saturday’s twin blasts in Ankara …

– ‘Topple the dictator’ –

In an emotional address to the mourners in Ankara, the HDP’s leader Selahattin Demirtas said that rather than seeking revenge people should aim to end Erdogan’s rule, starting with the upcoming legislative elections.

Fury towards Erdogan intensifies after Ankara attack

Ankara (AFP) – Anger towards President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over Turkey’s worst-ever terrorist attack intensified as authorities raced to identify the two male suicide bombers it blamed for the bloodshed.

The streets of Ankara filled with anti-government and pro-Kurdish protesters accusing the government of responsibility for the blast that ripped through a peace rally a day earlier, with several shouting “Erdogan murderer” and “government resign!”In Istanbul on Saturday, a 10,000-strong crowd accused the government of failing to protect citizens by providing security for the event, carrying placards reading “the state is a killer” and “we know the murderers”.

As tributes poured in from world leaders, Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was cited as saying “State attacked the people. Condolences recipient should be the people not Erdogan” on the party’s Twitter account.

In an emotional address to mourners in Ankara, Demirtas said that citizens should aim to end Erdogan’s rule, starting with the upcoming legislative elections.

“We are not going to act out of revenge and hatred. But we are going to ask for (people to be held to) account,” he added, saying the vote would be part of a process to “topple the dictator.”

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Relatives mourn near the grave of a victim of the twin bombings in Ankara, during the funeral in Ist …

The party believes the death toll now stands at 128, higher than the 97 people the prime minister’s office said were killed when the bombs exploded on Saturday morning as leftist and pro-Kurdish activists assembled by the city’s main train station.

The official toll also said 507 people were wounded, with 160 still in hospital and 65 in intensive care in 19 hospitals.

Next year, the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary as one of the finest laws our Congress has ever passed. It is a vital investigative tool for exposing government and corporate wrongdoing.

The FOIA was championed by Congressman John E. Moss (D-CA), who strove to “guarantee the right of every citizen to know the facts of his Government.” Moss, with whom I worked closely as an outside citizen advocate, said that “without the fullest possible access to Government information, it is impossible to gain the knowledge necessary to discharge the responsibilities of citizenship.”

All fifty states have adopted FOIA statutes.

As the FOIA approaches its 50th year, it faces a disturbing backlash from scientists tied to the agrichemical company Monsanto and its allies. Here are some examples.

On March 9th, three former presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – all with ties to Monsanto or the biotech industry – wrote in the pages of the Guardian to criticize the use of the state FOIA laws to investigate taxpayer-funded scientists who vocally defend Monsanto, the agrichemical industry, their pesticides, and genetically engineered food. They called the FOIAs an “organized attack on science.”

The super-secretive Monsanto has stated, regarding the FOIAs, that “agenda-driven groups often take individual documents or quotes out of context in an attempt to distort the facts, advance their agenda, and stop legitimate research.”

Advocates with the venerable Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) do worry that the FOIA can be abused to harass scientists for ideological reasons. This is true; for example, human-caused global warming deniers have abused the FOIA against climate scientists working at state universities like Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

69-year-old Douglas G. Williams of Norman, Oklahoma was sentenced to two years in prison this week for running a website that pointed out the flaws in lie detector tests. Williams is a former detective for the Oklahoma City Police Department and throughout the course of his career he administered thousands of polygraph tests for his own police department, as well as other agencies like the FBI and the Secret Service. Through his experience, Williams learned that a polygraph is not a valid way of truly figuring out whether or not someone is lying. In 1979, he invented “the sting technique,” which polygraph experts now refer to as “countermeasures.”

He wrote the first manual teaching people how to pass a polygraph test, which was initially published in 1979 and, according to him, was one of the very first e-books available on the Internet.

The U.S. Department Of Justice issued a press release this week stating that they planted federal agents to pose as customers and entrap Williams in schemes to help the agents cheat on polygraph tests.

According to admissions made in connection with his plea, Williams owned and operated Polygraph.com, an Internet-based business through which he trained people how to conceal misconduct and other disqualifying information when submitting to polygraph examinations in connection with federal employment suitability assessments, background investigations, internal agency investigations and other proceedings. In particular, Williams admitted that he trained an individual posing as a federal law enforcement officer to lie and conceal involvement in criminal activity from an internal agency investigation. Williams also admitted to training a second individual, posing as an applicant seeking federal employment, to lie and conceal crimes in a pre-employment polygraph examination. Williams also admitted to instructing the individuals to deny receiving his polygraph training.

I am back from my hiatus. I really was not sure if I would be back at all. Yet here I am with an oldie but definitely a goody. This video was posted in 2012 with test results and scientific findings that should have made the difference in the termination of GMO in the marketplace. Or at least a moratorium on its widespread release. Not to mention the cross contamination with non-gmo crops out in the fields. This is clear and concise proof that we have been sold out . Not to mention being used as guinea pigs in this race to fill Monsanto’s bank accounts . Along with other companies like it and their benefactors the FDA and The USDA.

Sooooooo, if you were still living in that fantasy land that believes the government is there to protect you, then please wake up and smell the rotting corpse of what used to be a public service oriented office. For it is now and has been for quite a while an office of corporate, personal, political and governmental gain at the expense of the people. It is our children and all the children who will come after who are and will be the by product of this exercise in greed and callous disregard for human life.

** A heartfelt Thank you, to those of you who waited and those of you who joined in my absence. Your support is very much appreciated. I am not sure how active I will be , but I will do my best to bring you some of the information I come across on a daily basis as well as some Guest writers when and as they arise 🙂

~Be vigilant and aware , for our foes only advantage is the element of surprise~

Click on the link to hear the entire interviewhttp://www.oneradionetwork.com/health…World renowned scientist lost his job when he warned about GE foodsDr
Arpad Pusztai evoked world wide media attention in August 1998, when he
said in British TV that he would not eat genetically engineered food
because of the insufficient testing procedures they have undergone.Pusztai
is a world renowned expert on food safety, who worked at UK’s leading
food safety research lab, the Rowett institute. His statement obviously
threatened to damage the then ongoing multimillion PR campaign of the
Biotech industry to create public confidence in GE foods. A few days
after his public appearance he was suspended and gagged by the research
institute where he worked.

Pointed out weakness in present food regulations
Dr
Pusztai’s pointed out that substances in Genetically Engineered (GE)
foods that have a slow acting effect would not be detected because
present regulations do not require long term safety testing. The
regulations prescribe an approval procedure based on the principle of
substantial equivalence. In practice this procedure allows very
superficially tested foods to be approved. As an illustrative example,
he mentioned fresh results from his research on certain pesticidal
Lectins (Pusztai is recognized as a world leading expert on Lectins).
Pusztai found that rats developed immune system defects and stunted
growth after a time period corresponding to 10 years of human life.Humiliating statements displayed about Pusztai
A
few days after his appearance on TV and Radio, the Rowett intstitute
suspended Pusztai. It was said that the GE potatoes were not intended to
be used as food. It was maintained that the results reported by Dr
Pusztai were misleading because he had mixed up the results of different
studies. In that context it was pointed out that he was old (68),
giving the impression of a senile and confused person. It was also said
that the research had not been done on GE potatoes but on a mixture of
natural potatoes and Lectin. It was indicated in a humiliating way that
the quality of Dr Pusztai’s research was deficient. The formal reason
for his suspension was that he had presented the results publicly before
they had been reviewed by other scientists (peer review) as required by
the Rowett Institute. At the same time as he was suspended, he was
disallowed to speak with the media to defend himself (which would have
revealed the misleading information from Rowett Institute).A
scientific committe was asked by the Rowett institute to review the
study Pustai referred to. It said there were important deficiencies in
the study.Independent scientists confirmed the correctness of Pusztais conclusions
Pusztai
then sent the research protocols to 24 independent scientists in
different countries. These turned down the conclusions of the review
committee and found that his research was of good quality and justified
his conclusions. They found that Pusztai had not mixed up any results.

Scientists
and physicians (including the undersigned), who had been in touch with
Pusztai confirmed that he was perfectly clear-minded with no signs of
confusion or memory defects.

“Breathtaking impertinence” by Royal society according to Lancet
Then
a second review committe was appointed by the Royal Society in UK. It
again concluded that Pusztai’s results were inconclusive yes even
flawed.

A world leading scientific journal found the judgement
of the Royal Society “a gesture of breathtaking impertinence” (Lancet,
Editorial, May 22, p1769).

Pusztai has pointed out a number of
obvious deficencies in this review report, see also the interview below
and Dr Pusztai’s website, where he explains this in detail.

Harmful GE potatoes would have been approved
Recently
Pusztai has also said that the lectin potatoes he had been studying
were indeed intended for food although that was denied by the Rowett
institute. That was the reason why he wanted to make the alarming
results known. Had not Pusztai’s long term study revealed the danger,
the GE lectin potatoes might very well have turned up on the market, as
formally they were “substantially equivalent” with the natural variety,
Pusztai said. This case demonstrates the serious insufficiency of the
present regulations for food safety that don’t demand long term testing
of GE foods, see Substantial equivalence versus scientific food safety
assessment. This is the probable reason why great efforts were made to
suppress the truth and to “kill” the messenger.

Nevada Tells Father: Over $10K to Access Kids’ School Records

A conscientious father in Nevada received shocking news when he requested to see the permanent records of his four children from state education officials: His request would cost $10,194.

John Eppolito, the father, was concerned about a recent decision in Nevada to join a multi-state consortium that would share student data.

Fox News explains, “Nevada has spent an estimated $10 million in its seven-year-old System of Accountability Information in Nevada, known as SAIN. Data from county school systems is uploaded nightly to a state database, and, under the new arrangement, potentially shared with other counties and states.”

Eppolito was interested in accessing his children’s records in order to learn what information had been compiled on his children. It was then that he learned that he would have to pay significant fees as well as special programming costs to run a report of that kind.

The total, Eppolito was told, would come to $10,194.

“The problem is that I can’t stop them from collecting the data,” said Eppolito. “I just wanted to know what it was. It almost seems impossible. Certainly $10,000 is enough reason to prevent a parent from getting the data.”

Department of Public Information officer Judy Osgood attempted to explain the reason for such a high price: “Please understand that the primary purpose of the Department of Education’s database it to support required state and federal reporting, funding of local education agencies, education accountability, and public reporting,” Osgood states. “The system currently is not capable of responding to the type of individual student data request you have presented.”

Eppolito was not satisfied with the response. “This data is for everyone except the parents. It’s wrong,” he asserts.

The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) allows parents to view their children’s records and permits small fees to be issued in order to access those records. Ironically, under the act, the fees are not supposed to be so substantial that they ultimately prevent parents from obtaining them.

“Unless the imposition of a fee effectively prevents a parent or eligible student from exercising the right to inspect and review the student’s education records, an educational agency or institution may charge a fee for a copy of an education record which is made for the parent or eligible student,” reads a section of the act. “An educational agency or institution may not charge a fee to search for or to retrieve the education records of a student.”

According to the regulations, the above criteria apply to “any state educational agency and its components.”

The state, by requiring the fee of over $10,000, appears to be acting in violation of FERPA.

“They are supposed to provide [parents] the opportunity to inspect and review [records] upon request,” explained one official at the Family Policy Compliance Office (FCPO), the federal agency over FERPA. “There shouldn’t be a fee for inspecting and reviewing the records.”

But Osgood does not view it that way. “NDE does provide free access to education records,” she said. “SAIN was not designed for student-level inspection. Our understanding of FERPA is that this level of inspection applies to the LEA [local education authority—i.e., school district] and school.”

(NaturalNews) A proposed new federal law just introduced by Rep. G.K. Butterfield (a Democrat) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (a Republican) would outlaw state-enacted GMO labeling laws. The new law, ridiculously called the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, is actually an last-ditch, desperate effort by the biotech industry and the GMA to forever bury the truth about GMOs so that consumers don’t know they’re eating poison.

According to mainstream media reports (1), the bill would require the FDA to mandate GMO labeling only if those foods “are found to be unsafe or materially different from foods produced without biotech ingredients.”

Because the FDA and USDA have already decided, against all scientific evidence, that GMOs are “safe” and “not materially different” from other foods, this requirement is nothing but sheer sleight of hand and a pandering to idiocy. In truth, this new bill, if passed into law, would allow food companies to permanently and insidiously hide GMOs in all their products forever, nullifying the numerous state-based GMO labeling laws which are on the verge of passing.

After two states have passed GE labeling bills and more than 30 others are poised to consider similar labeling bills and ballot initiatives, the food and biotech industry have goat-roped some members of Congress into introducing legislation to block state GE labeling laws.

Push for GMOs run by criminally-minded organizations

GMOs have already been restricted or banned in over 60 countries (2), and Americans are very close to achieving victory in state-based GMO labeling campaigns. The very idea that American consumers might find out they’ve been eating GMO poisons in most of their favorite foods is so horrifying to the biotech industry (and the processed food front groups) that its enforcers are now seeking this “nuclear option” to legally deceive consumers about GMOs with the complicity of the FDA.

U.S. bill seeks to block mandatory GMO food labeling by states

(Reuters) – A Republican congressman from Kansas introduced legislation on Wednesday that would nullify efforts in multiple states to require labeling of genetically modified foods

The bill, dubbed the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act” was drafted by U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo from Kansas, and is aimed at overriding bills in roughly two dozen states that would require foods made with genetically engineered crops to be labeled as such.

The bill specifically prohibits any mandatory labeling of foods developed using bioengineering.

“We’ve got a number of states that are attempting to put together a patchwork quilt of food labeling requirements with respect to genetic modification of foods,” said Pompeo. “That makes it enormously difficult to operate a food system. Some of the campaigns in some of these states aren’t really to inform consumers but rather aimed at scaring them. What this bill attempts to do is set a standard.”

Consumer groups have been arguing for labeling because of questions they have both about the safety for human health and the environmental impacts of genetically modified foods, also called GMOs.

Ballot measures in California in 2012 and last year in Washington state narrowly lost after GMO crop developers, including Monsanto Co., and members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) poured millions into campaigns to defeat the measures.

The companies say the crops are safe and cite many scientific studies back those claims. Pompeo on Wednesday reiterated those claims, stating GMOS are safe and “equally healthy” and no labeling is needed.

“It has to date made food safer and more abundant,” said Pompeo. “It has been an enormous boon to all of humanity.”

But there are also many scientific studies showing links to human and animal health problems, and many indicating environmental damage related to GMO crops.

Congress considers blocking GMO food labeling

A new bill introduced in Congress looks to ban states from implementing their own labeling laws when it comes to food containing genetically engineered ingredients.

According to Reuters, US Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) introduced the legislation on Wednesday, which is intended to head off bills in about 24 states that would require companies to inform customers when their food is produced using genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Titled the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act,” the proposal would forbid states from enacting such proposals.

“We’ve got a number of states that are attempting to put together a patchwork quilt of food labeling requirements with respect to genetic modification of foods,” Pompeo told Reuters. “That makes it enormously difficult to operate a food system. Some of the campaigns in some of these states aren’t really to inform consumers but rather aimed at scaring them. What this bill attempts to do is set a standard.”

Supporters of GMO labeling argue that modified ingredients pose a threat to human health, and that as a result they should be clearly labeled in the marketplace so that consumers can make informed decisions. In addition to health concerns, they also point to the negative environmental consequences that could arise from widespread GMO use, since millions of acres of farmland and weeds are developing resistances to the pesticides used.

Opponents, however, point to their own studies, showing that GMO crops are safe and therefore do not need to be labeled differently than other products.

Transparency activist Ryan Shapiro discusses a growing controversy over the FBI’s monitoring of Occupy Houston in 2011. The case centers on what the FBI knew about an alleged assassination plot against Occupy leaders and why it failed to share this information. The plot was first revealed in a heavily redacted document obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund through a FOIA request. The document mentioned an individual “planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas.” When Shapiro asked for more details, the FBI said it found 17 pages of pertinent records and gave him five of them, with some information redacted. Shapiro sued, alleging the FBI had improperly invoked FOIA exemptions.

Transparency activist Ryan Shapiro discusses a growing controversy over the FBI’s monitoring of Occupy Houston in 2011. The case centers on what the FBI knew about an alleged assassination plot against Occupy leaders and why it failed to share this information. The plot was first revealed in a heavily redacted document obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund through a FOIA request. The document mentioned an individual “planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas.” When Shapiro asked for more details, the FBI said it found 17 pages of pertinent records and gave him five of them, with some information redacted. Shapiro sued, alleging the FBI had improperly invoked FOIA exemptions. Last week, Federal District Judge Rosemary Collyer agreed with Shapiro, ruling the FBI had to explain why it withheld the records.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to talk about your work around animal rights activism and getting information, but I want to first turn to Occupy Houston. You have been working on getting information from the FBI around Occupy Houston. The particular issue focuses on what the FBI knew about an alleged assassination plot in 2011 against leaders of Occupy Houston and why it failed to share this information. The plot was first revealed in a heavily redacted document obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice through a FOIA request. It read, quote, “An identified [REDACTED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary,” unquote. When our guest, Ryan Shapiro, asked for more details, the FBI said it found 17 pages of pertinent records and gave him five of them with some information redacted. So, Ryan Shapiro, you sued, alleging the FBI had improperly invoked FOIA exemptions.

Last week, Federal District Judge Rosemary Collyer seemed to agree with you, when she ruled the FBI had to explain why it withheld records. She made reference in her ruling to David Hardy, the head of the FBI’s FOIA division, writing, quote, “At no point does Mr. Hardy supply specific facts as to the basis for FBI’s belief that the Occupy protesters might have been engaged in terroristic or other criminal activity. … Neither the word ‘terrorism’ nor the phrase ‘advocating the overthrow of the government’ are talismanic, especially where FBI purports to be investigating individuals who ostensibly are engaged in protected First Amendment activity.”

Ryan Shapiro, explain what the judge ruled and what “talismanic” means.

A federal judge has ordered the FBI to explain why it withheld some information requested by a graduate student for his research on a plot to assassinate Occupy Houston protest leaders.

Ryan Noah Shapiro, a doctoral student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., filed a lawsuit April 29, 2013, against the U.S. Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer issued her order, with an accompanying memo, on March 12.

The FBI, as part of the Department of Justice, controls the records Shapiro wanted for his study of “conflicts at the nexus of American national security, law enforcement and political dissent,” the plaintiff’s complaint stated.

Houston was among hundreds of U.S. cities where protesters occupied outdoor spaces as part of the Occupy Movement that started in New York’s Zucotti Park on Sept. 17, 2011.

“The movement has sought to expose how the wealthiest 1 percent of society promulgates an unfair global economy that harms people and destroys communities worldwide,” the complaint stated.

Shapiro said in his complaint that the existence of an assassination plot against Occupy Houston’s leaders became known through the FBI’s earlier release of information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

“According to one of the released records, … [REDACTED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles…,” Shapiro stated in his complaint.

Shapiro requested additional information from the FBI in January 2013.

“There is presently a vigorous and extraordinarily important debate in the United States about the authority of the government to conduct extrajudicial killings on American soil,” the complaint stated.

“The records sought by plaintiff would likely be an invaluable contribution to the public discourse on this issue,” Shapiro’s complaint said. “It would also be a significant controversy if it was revealed that the FBI deliberately failed to act to prevent a plot to assassinate American protest leaders.”

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